Using Data to Support the Whole Student at UW Tacoma

Supporting students as whole people at the University of Washington Tacoma

Colleges and universities traditionally measure student success by outcomes such as retention, graduation, and employment after college. Although these indicators are important, they capture only part of the student experience. Leaders at the University of Washington Tacoma (UW Tacoma) recognize that supporting students (particularly those from historically underserved backgrounds) requires a broader understanding of success—one that looks beyond whether they remain enrolled, earn a degree, or find a job after graduation. 

As a community-engaged regional public university, UW Tacoma understands that academic and career outcomes are shaped by whether their basic needs are met, whether they feel safe and supported, and whether they see a meaningful connection between their education and the lives they hope to build. In response, UW Tacoma has worked to align its student success efforts around the whole student, an approach that considers traditional academic and employment outcomes alongside the social, emotional, and economic conditions students experience throughout college.

In 2022, UW Tacoma established the Career & Social Mobility team, a student affairs department focused on career and social mobility for economically marginalized students. The department brought together career development, first-generation student programs, and targeted supports for students who have experienced foster care, homelessness, or incarceration. By coordinating work that is often divided across separate units in higher education, UW Tacoma created a stronger foundation for responding to students’ interconnected academic, personal, and career needs. At the same time, the university sought to strengthen how it measures student success, including outcomes that occur after graduation and can be difficult for postsecondary institutions to observe.

One insight has been especially influential. A 2020 study of students who left UW Tacoma and Tacoma Community College in good academic standing found that, alongside expected challenges such as financial pressures and basic needs, many students struggled with a lack of purpose. This finding reinforced the university's commitment to viewing student success holistically and underscored the importance of helping students connect their education with meaningful personal and career goals. As institutions across the country continue to rethink how they define and measure student success, UW Tacoma offers an example of how a broader, student-centered framework can help align programs, measures, and institutional priorities around supporting the whole student. 

How UW Tacoma used the E-W Framework

As the Career & Social Mobility team developed it’s theory of change and UW of Tacoma expanded it’s broader Student Success Outcomes Framework, it used the Education-to-Workforce (E-W) Indicator Framework as an organizing resource. The E-W Framework’s essential questions helped the university look across programs, identify common student needs and pain points, and connect strategies that might otherwise remain siloed. For example, the essential question about safe and supportive environments helped UW Tacoma name the importance of basic needs, psychological safety, and belonging before students can fully engage in career exploration or internships. Essential questions about early momentum in postsecondary education, credentials of value, and pathways to quality jobs also helped the university connect students’ day-to-day experiences during college with their longer-term opportunities after graduation. Together, these questions provided a common structure for considering how students’ experiences during college relate to their opportunities after graduation. 

The framework also helped UW Tacoma connect programs that are often organized separately in higher education. Essential questions about quality pathways and quality jobs helped inform UW Tacoma’s decision to co-locate career advising with pre-major advising, linking students’ academic choices, career preparation, and postgraduation goals earlier in their college experience. This shared approach reinforced the university's commitment to supporting students' academic, personal, and career development through coordinated services rather than isolated initiatives. 

One aspect of the framework that particularly resonated with university leaders was its North Star emphasizing equity, economic mobility, agency, and well-being. The Career & Social Mobility team’s theory of change is grounded in a culture of care, recognizing that students' basic needs, psychological safety, and sense of belonging often need to be addressed before they can fully engage in career exploration, internships, or other career-connected learning opportunities. The framework provided language and structure that aligned closely with this philosophy, helping faculty and staff define postsecondary success not only in terms of retention, graduation, employment, or economic return, but also in terms of students’ well-being, agency, autonomy, and ability to build meaningful lives after college.

Positioning student success work for the future

UW Tacoma continues to use this broader conception of student success to inform its Student Success Outcomes Framework. In addition to tracking traditional outcomes such as retention and graduation, the university is exploring measures of early academic momentum, career readiness, sense of belonging, postgraduation outcomes, sense of purpose, and longer-term career success. For example, the university is looking at early academic momentum through measures such as credit accumulation and credit completion, drawing on benchmarked metrics from the Postsecondary Data Partnership. It is also exploring tools such as the NACE Career Readiness and Mobility Inventory, the National Alumni Career Mobility survey, and social-emotional instruments focused on sense of belonging, sense of purpose, and career readiness. UW Tacoma has also added work-based learning questions to its commencement survey to better understand where students are accessing career-connected learning and where equity gaps may remain. By identifying indicators closely connected to students' experiences, campus leaders are strengthening their ability to understand in what areas students may need more support before challenges affect their longer-term outcomes.